


You In Mid-Air

by MissEllaVation



Category: U2 (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 18:28:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16792363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissEllaVation/pseuds/MissEllaVation
Summary: It's June, 1983. The weather is a bit rough. U2 is being filmed at Red Rocks, and Bono—not for the first time and certainly not for the last—scares the shit out of Edge.





	You In Mid-Air

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zoodream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoodream/gifts).



> This is for zoodream, who pointed out that no one has written much about the War era, and who offered some interesting speculation about what might have been going through Edge’s head while Bono did his daredevil routine, climbing up the lighting rig in the rain.
> 
> This is an odd fic. I think only super-committed B/E people will like it. It’s not sexy. Well, not very. You have to just believe in the bond between them. Also, I’ve opened with kind of a literary flight-of-fancy/flashback. I hope it’s not a total fail. 
> 
> I only did the smallest amount of research for this one (watching the video and reading the wikipedia page.) The rest is made up.
> 
> Fewer than 3000 words of angsty Edge P.O.V. :) Thanks to everyone who reads, comments, and inspires me!

_6 June, 1983_

Here’s a story from my past, just for you.

When I was in primary school I knew a kid named Sean. Well, I knew about twenty kids named Sean, but this particular Sean stands out in my memory. He was freckle-faced, like you, and like you, he had startling blue eyes. But the similarities ended there, because Sean was homely—his face was sort of flattened, as if he’d had to tunnel his way through something less yielding than a woman’s body to be born. His whole life was like that, I think. Difficult, involving the use of force. By age nine, he looked like a professional boxer trapped in a child’s body. At least, that’s how I remember him now.

Sean was fearless. He would stand up to any teacher, or to any bigger kid. He was the kind of guy who would poke a stick at a dead animal in a field, till it flipped over and showed its frozen grimace and empty eyes. When the rest of us backed off in horror, Sean would shrug and say, “that’s just how it is to be dead.”

By age nine I had tamed my parents’ clipped Welsh accent into something more acceptable to Dubliners. I made good marks and earned praise from my teachers. The other boys had no use for any of this. “You’ve a pair of legs like pencil leads,” they said. And, “would you look at the _ears_ of him!” But Sean would put his hand on my back and say, “leave David alone, youse.” Sometimes it worked.

For Christmas that year I was given a model of a Ford Mustang in metallic cherry red. Of course I had to bring it to school the first day back. Everyone wanted to carry it around, but Sean was the only one who could talk me into it.

“I promise I’ll give it back. I won’t let anything happen to it.” Those blue, unblinking eyes. “I swear on me nan’s grave.”

What was I to do in the face of a late nan? Sean put the car on his desk in the classroom for others to admire. Fine. I was more worried about him out in the field behind the school, as he was famous for breaking things. But when we went outside, he kept the car under his sweater. He looked pregnant with it. At the end of the school day, he handed it back to me unscathed, using both hands, as if he were cradling a kitten. “Thanks mate,” he said. I loved him a bit.

Next day, he fell out of a tree.

There was only one climbable tree on the school grounds—a tall old leafless tree—and for some reason Sean decided he had to climb it on a frigid January afternoon. The other boys followed tentatively, alighting here and there on lower branches, not daring to go too high. But Sean scrambled up to the highest branch that looked like it would support his weight, and he sat there proudly, surveying his domain and caw-ing like a crow.

I felt woozy looking up at the soles of the other boys’ shoes. They called me chicken and made clucking noises, but I stayed rooted in the mud of the schoolyard.

I suppose it was inevitable that after about five minutes, a crack like a gunshot split the cold afternoon—Sean’s branch snapping. He dropped a short distance, looking down at me with round, astonished eyes. That mad blue. _No-no, no-no_ , went the voice in my head, in time with the pounding of my heart. _No-no, no-no_.

The branch gave way. Sean plummeted noiselessly through the air, and hit the ground with a light thump.

An awful silence, then the piping voices of the boys still up in the tree.

“Evans! Get help! _Run_ , you fuckin’ waster!”

I ran.

Sean was fine, of course. Guys like Sean are always fine. Mildly concussed, but fine. He missed one day of school, then returned as a conquering hero. I think that was when the girls began to see something compelling in his ugliness.

***

I’ve told you all of this for a reason. I wanted you to know. I could have stopped Sean from climbing up that far. He would have listened to me. But I never said anything. Such was my faith in him. He came back to me tonight, as we played in the cold needlepoint mist, while the cameras circled us and the techs stood ready to squeegee water from the stage. Sean's tiny body falling right in front of my eyes, over and over again. 

The show was going better than it should have, which is often the case with us. So often that it almost makes me _believe_. (“Lord I believe; help my unbelief.” You know how that can be.) Anyway, after a few songs, I was beginning to get a sense of how all of this could look on film. The great, high bowl of rock, the mist falling in curtains, the lit torches. Even the tiny, bedraggled audience was perfect. Orphans of the storm. We might be captured forever at our very best, generating warmth and light.

Adam was outstanding that night—grinning like a loon, his head a beautiful fuzzed-out dandelion. I could feel every note he played through the soles of my shoes. And Larry, powerful as always, playing like someone twice his age and twice his size. His baby-face shocked me every time I turned to look at him. It didn’t matter at all that we had water dripping into our eyes, or that our fingers were freezing cold. We were pros now. We played through.

As for _you_ —well. You. Those poor sopping-wet kids loved you, didn’t they? You’d walked amongst them earlier, in the torrential rain, thanked them for braving the weather and the dangerous mountain roads. You touched the boys’ shoulders, the girls’ backs. You told them not to worry about what was printed on their tickets, but to gather in close. If only someone could bottle that audience and sell it. Some snake-oil salesman somewhere could make a fortune. “When you’re feeling low, simply uncork this and take a whiff of pure, uncut adulation.”

You’d already spent way too much time with them, in my opinion, letting them hang onto your hands and legs. I almost panicked when you tumbled backwards off the b-stage. They caught you, but it’s never certain that they will. From the very beginning of our life as a band you’ve put yourself willingly into strangers’ hands. You’ve disappeared into mobs only to emerge minutes later covered in dirty handprints, your clothes torn and sometimes even bloodied. You’re entirely too trusting. You want to be everybody’s friend. You can’t be that, Bono. It just doesn’t work that way. But I’m sure you’ll always try.

So I guess I should not have been surprised at all when you took off sideways during “The Electric Co.,” disappearing for a few seconds, then scuttling up the lighting rig with your stupid (I mean, very meaningful) white flag, on its big stupid pole that could impale a person easily if they were to fall onto it, for example, from a great height.

Not just that, but lit torches, a wet PA system, live wires in the rain. I swear I could hear our insurers screaming all the way from Dublin. And you, crouching like a rain-slick gargoyle above this precarious, unlikely pit in the mountains. Red Rocks is about six thousand feet above sea level. If you could somehow put Red Rocks right next to Dublin Bay and look straight up at it from Sandymount beach, you couldn’t even see it. It would be a dot in the clouds. But that wasn’t high enough for you. You had to keep climbing.

And I kept playing, of course. Dutiful Edge. I could feel my face setting into a grimace. A familiar feeling. An old feeling. The feeling of being left on the ground while everyone else takes off. Rooted in the mud of the schoolyard. And something else—something dark and turbid stirring in my guts.

_No-no. No-no._

Fear, of course. Pure fear. Though the film will catch Adam and me gaping up at you and looking only mildly distressed. You daft bugger. You stupid prick.

It will also capture your—I’ll say it. I’ll say it, okay? The film will capture your beauty. Your minute but shoulder-heavy footballer’s body, your long bare arms, the humanizing bit of fleshiness at your waist. Your strong legs, muscled like a dancer’s. Your incongruous swan neck. And your oddly delicate, thin-skinned face, where the freckles float like biscuit crumbs on milk.

 _No-no. No-no._ But also, _go! Go!_

You fucking eejit. I planned to kill you when got back down. I would knock you flat and tear you limb from limb, and you would deserve it.

But in the meantime I had to play the Electric Co. solo. I don't do long solos, but there _is_ this one. The film will catch me pounding hell out of my strings till my frozen fingers almost bleed. I was so angry. Not just that. Not just angry. Something else. Frustrated. At being tied to the ground. Tied down with strings and keys and cables. With technicians circling me, with cameras on a swivel. And there you went with those fucking ‘Send in the Clowns’ lyrics, because heaven forbid you keep your mouth shut while I'm playing. You got the words all wrong anyway. You always do. It was _you_ in mid-air, _me_ on the ground.

***

I didn’t say a word to you until we were back in our hotel bar in Denver, wearing warm, dry clothes but still feeling chilled to the bone, drinking terrible American beer and picking at the catering trays. The mood was self-congratulatory. We had pulled it off despite the weather. The energy was incredible, the setting dramatic enough to suit both you and our songs. The film would look like no other concert film ever made, and the money we’d put into it—pretty much everything we had—would surely come back to us tenfold. Paul was on the phone with Island and with others, smiling fit to bust.

So I waited. I waited until it got late, and everyone began to drift away. Then I followed you into your room and slammed the door.

“Do you actually _want_ to die, Bono?”

You gaped at me. Your eyes. That mad blue.

“I’m serious. What about Ali? What about the rest of us?” I stamped my foot, though the carpeting somewhat spoiled the effect. “Will you ever, _ever_ start thinking about what you’re doing?”

“Edge—” You reached out to touch me but I twisted away from your hand.

“You’re not a fucking machine. You can’t just get replacement bits.”

“Oh, I see now. Because I climbed the lighting rig.”

“Yes, genius. Because you climbed the lighting rig.”

“But look Edge, those kids came all that way through the mountains in the rain. It was dangerous for them. I couldn’t just stand there and sing. I had to connect. I had to be something worth looking at. Everything we’ve got is riding on this stupid film.”

“Yeah, and if you’d got electrocuted and splattered yourself on the stage it would’ve been the end for all of us. The film would just rot in a can somewhere.” I stopped to think about this for a few seconds. “Or not, even. _You’d_ probably end up some kind of legend, and MTV would trot the rest of us out in ten years for a fucking retrospective like they did with The Doors."

“Edge—”

“No, really! I think you think you have to be a sacrifice, like some kind of rock’n’roll Jesus. Like Ziggy Stardust at the end of the record. _‘Give me your hands!’_ You just wanna dive into the crowd and let them devour you. But I don’t think Bowie ever actually did that.”

You shrugged. “Iggy Pop did.”

“Jesus Christ, Bono. Iggy Pop did a lot of things that you are not gonna do, okay? I mean, it’s fine if you want to fall backwards a couple of feet onto a pile of 16-year-olds in the hopes that they won’t drop you or worse—”

“Are you fucking jealous?” Your eyes snapped at me. “Is that it?”

I felt my hands clench and for a blinding instant I was sure I was about to hit you. I forced myself to look away from your face—at the darkened windows, up at the ceiling. I forced myself to breathe. “No, I am not jealous.”

“Then—”

“Bono, I just want this to work! I want it to last! I don’t want to go back to Dublin and end up wearing a fucking lab coat for the rest of my life. If you end up dead or mangled or someth—” I couldn’t finish the thought. A horrible sound came out of me, scraping upwards through my chest and throat.

Next thing I knew you had me in a bear-hug, or a headlock, and it was so odd. I felt safe, instantly, as if you were a much bigger man than you really are. You just held me like that until I stopped—I guess I was crying, or doing something like crying. Whatever it was, I stopped after a minute or two. It was the pressure, that was all. The pressure of the whole interminable day and night had caught up with me. Would we play, would we cancel, would Paul be able to convince the crew to stay with us. Would we lose fifty thousand pounds, or not. Okay yes, we would play after all. Exhausted already, no opening acts, cameras everywhere, wet through, and so cold.

But there was more to it than just that. I knew. You knew, too, even more than I did.

I hid my face in your neck, chasing the scent of your skin, your damp hair. Your hands roved up and down my back. I wanted to say something about that. I wanted to say a lot of things. But all I could manage was, “Why do you do these things, Bono? You scare the shit out of me.”

“I didn’t plan it.” You whispered this right into my ear. I felt like a man wrestling with himself. I wanted to pull you closer to me; I didn’t want to do any such thing. “I wasn’t even thinking in words…”

“It’s okay. Forget it.” How the fuck were you so warm? I could feel my fingers thawing, at long last, in the vicinity of your shoulder blades. “It’s okay now.”

“I just saw in my mind’s eye that it would be a great thing for the cameras.” You rubbed my neck with your warm hand. “So were you, Edge. You were a great thing for the cameras too. You looked so good tonight. You looked like Joe Strummer.”

You were almost, but not quite, pushing my head down into your chest. Down the front of your body. Your old sweatshirt with the torn collar. The smell of hotel soap and warm skin.

“And _you_ looked like…” A what-is-it, a faun, I think, prancing around on your little goat feet. All you needed was a pair of horns. Not because of anything you did tonight, but because of something you might someday do. Something you are, inherently. A magnet in the shape of a small, strange-looking man, drawing everything and everyone into your orbit. A girl jumped up on stage somehow and threw her arm around you, and while it’s not like this has never happened before, this time I swear I could see every other girl in the crowd thinking _NO! MINE!_ And what will the girls at home think when they see us on TV? _No-no, no-no. Mine. MIne._

“What did I look like, Edge?”

“God, would you just stop?” I pulled your hand off the back of my neck, shoved you away. Reciting a litany to myself. _I’m a married man, you’re a married man, we love women, I love women, girls in the audience, pretty eyes pretty hair soft skin thighs lips breasts._

“I’m sorry, Edge.” Your eyes swept my face, assessing me. Your entire being, your warm corporeal body, was still canted towards me, waiting for me to come back. You weren’t sorry. You never are, when this happens. And it does happen. Sometimes.

“It’s fine, Bono.”

“It doesn’t mean anything, you know.”

“Of course not.”

“It was such a hard day. I wanted to feel like someone understood—”

“Yes, okay, me too.”

Only now do you take a step backward. “I’m gonna try to ring Ali.”

I looked at my watch. “It’s very early at home.”

“She’ll be up.”

“Okay. Give her my love. I’m going to bed.”

***

Alone in bed I replay the day and the night over and over again. The two crews: our own friendly but skeptical one, the film crew angry and threatening to leave. The Alarm and The Divinyls ringing up to say they're bowing out. The kids camped outside the venue. You gathering them in. Paul speechifying below the stage, rallying the troops. The rain, the fog. Steam pouring from Adam's mouth. My frozen, aching fingers. You. Me with my feet on the ground, you in mid-air. You in my arms.

_I have leapt to the top of a lighting rig in a single bound, weightless. I’m looking down at the crowd, everyone is holding up their arms and cheering, they love me, no one is calling me a chicken or a waster, they love me, they love ME, and in the center of it all, you, your eyes wide and your smile a perfect triangle, a pair of tiny horns on your head, and you’re beckoning, calling, “Come on, The Edge, I’ve got you! I’ve got you!”_


End file.
